Sunday, October 4, 2015

5 Questions for Pole Pole Press

"Earlier this year, I interviewed Fouad Asfour of the Johannesburg-based Pole Pole Press, about the press’ first publication, Emzana Shack Recollections, by Lungile Sojini, and what he learned as he dipped into the world of publishing and distributing books. At “close to 100 pages in 12 pt Times New Roman on A4, single spacing,” it was “not exactly a short story,” but something about its “peculiar style” got a hold of Asfour. He wanted readers to encounter the writing as is, rather than have it shaped by teams of editors. What followed was an entertaining email conversation about his “experiment” to “show that it’s possible to make publishing more broadly available”; the “dictatorship” of paper production companies that “molest” people “with the whiteness of [their] oh so clean bonded paper, ignoring requests for recycled or unbleached paper”; and why the low readership in South Africa is more attributable to the fact that the “current book market clearly does not produce for the large audience…but for a small, mainly white middle class” in the country." Continue reading.

ABOUT TEAROOM BOOKS

Run by Pravasan Pillay and Jenny Kellerman Pillay, it aims to publish pamphlets of contemporary poetry, fiction, non-fiction and humour.

Apart from Tearoom Books related material this site will also carry short humour pieces.

Contact: tearoombooks@gmail.com

New Tearoom Books Titles

Gary Cummiskey's Don't Stop Until Incinerated is a short collection of poems that inhabit a desolate, disquieting place, a place in which the fabric of reality is threadbare. Cummiskey has mastered the art of minimalist unease, yet there are also moments of dark humour in these 26 starkly elegant poems, characterised by his iconoclastic surrealism.

New Tearoom Books Titles

30 Poems by Pravasan Pillay collects a selection of poems written mostly between 2003-2006 and published in South African journals. The themes of the poems are old, new and broken love; sex; marriage; failure; vanity; and quitting smoking.

Tearoom Books Titles

Loop is Tearoom Books' writing zine. It will be published primarily as free e-chapbooks. Issue 2 comprises a selection of poetry. Click on the cover for more information.

Tearoom Books Titles

Glumlazi by Pravasan Pillay, was released in January 2009. Glumlazi, Pillay's debut, is a collection of short poems, concerning revenge, sex and the blues. The majority of poems run no-more than two lines. Available at R40 including postage. For order information, contact tearoombooks@gmail.com

OTHER

(Book) Shaggy: 14 Rather Amusing Rambles by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay. Second Print Run. Prepare yourself for a cast of some of the most manipulative, ingratiating, disillusioned, egotistical, inauthentic, spiteful narcissists operating in contemporary South Africa. Within these pages you will encounter fourteen first-hand shaggy stories told by a rogues gallery of scheming misanthropes whose speeches are full of sound and fury, signifying very little. These hilarious blowhards will make you snigger, cringe and wish your cousin had rather given you Spud 5 for your birthday. Published by BK Publishing. Price: R135. To order a copy write to: andrea [at] bkpublishing [dot] co [dot] za